Chicago Fire to face Manchester United in World Football Challenge on July 23 @ 7:00 PM

Andrew Hauptman kept referring to Manchester United vs. Chicago Fire as an 'expectation' last week because the Fire couldn't officially announce anything. Well today you could say that the expectation has been met and on Saturday, July 23rd at 7:00 PM, Manchester United will take Soldier Field to play against the Chicago Fire. If you are a Fire season ticket holder, your tickets are already set up as 'Bonus Ticket #2'. If you are not a season ticket holder and would like to get your tickets guaranteed for the Manchester United game, you can chat/call/Tweet/E-mail with a rep or buy your tickets here. With all of the regular benefits of buying a ticket in Section 8, it becomes an even better value to purchase a prorated season ticket for $190 since you now also get a ticket to the Manchester United game. Single tickets for this game will be available later on. Again, purchasing season tickets is currently the only way to make sure you get in for the Red Devils.


The other interesting wrinkle in this development is that MLS sent out a press release at the same time as the Fire announcing the expansion of the World Football Challenge. In addition to Chicago, Manchester United will play against the New England Revolution on July 13th at 8:00 PM at Gillette Stadium and FC Barcelona on July 30th at 7:00 PM at FedEx Field. The rest of the rules, format and teams who will play in the World Football Challenge will be announced later. This could either be great or it could be end up being a Sister Cities International Cup - just a bunch of exhibitions surrounded by the facade of a tournament. Watching the starting lineups for Manchester will be a curious trial as in addition to the games on July 13th, July 23th, and July 30th, Manchester is playing games outside the WFC when they play in the MLS All-Star Game on July 27th and against the Seattle Sounders on July 20th. Five cities and five games in 17 days is tough on any team but at least the chance to see the famous red jerseys with white collars will be within reasonable distance for anyone in the United States this summer.